


Unexpected Future

by BenRG



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chloe chooses not to lie down and die (in many ways), F/F, Fix-It, Max decides that rules are made to be broken, Supernatural Elements, TW: Description of violent firearms incident, TW: Recollections of Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29786052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenRG/pseuds/BenRG
Summary: At the end of Season 1 of Life is Strange, Max Caulfield was given a simple choice: The life of Chloe Price or the life of thousands of people in Arcadia Bay. However, what if a single random event changed everything and balanced the books in an unforeseen way? After all, it was never just Max's choice, was it?My first LiS fan-fiction ever completed. I make no special claim to originality. It was just my idea and I wanted to write it out. After I did, I thought it was good enough to post.Warning! It gets really sappy towards the end but I couldn't figure out any alternative!
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price, Rachel Amber/Chloe Price
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter contains a verbatim transcript of dialogue from one of the scenes in Episode 1 of the game; credit for this goes to the writing team of the game.

" _Leave them out of this,_ bitch _!_ "

In the corner behind the stalls, Max Caulfield rocked back and forwards on her heels as she crouched, her arms wrapped around her head and tears streaming down her cheeks. Never before had the simple act of _continuing to live_ seemed so hard than as the last few minutes of the life of her best friend... of the girl she _loved_... wound down; as one life was about to be unjustly destroyed so that thousands would live.

" _I can tell everyone that Nathan Prescott is a punk ass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself!_ "

" _You don't know who the **fuck** I am or who you're messing with...!_"

 _Chloe, I'm sorry! I'm so, so **sorry**!_ Max swallowed deeply as Chloe's voice changed, her tone raising an octave and taking on the strangled aspect of sudden and unexpected mortal fear. 

" _Where'd you get that? What are you doing? Come on! **Put that thing away!**_ "

It was no good; she _couldn't_ do this! She couldn't hide away like a coward as Chloe's life was ripped away from her. She _couldn't let her die_ without at least having the courage to look her in the eye one last time. She looked around the corner and her eyes met Chloe's panic-filled cornflower blue eyes, which widened ever so slightly more at the sight of her... Maybe it was Max's imagination but... _did Chloe just mouth her name_?

* * *

Chloe Price was having... a _bad_ day. In fact, the moment that little drug-pushing, raping piss-artist Nathan had pulled that evil-looking auto-mag on her, she figured that this was going to be _the_ bad day and quite possibly her _last_ day.

However, she wasn't so focused on the very real possibility of death that she missed the brunette girl peeking around the corner. Chloe saw dozens of faces go through her life every day but there was something about those terrible, guilt-filled ocean-blue eyes that rammed straight into her memories and, beyond any sane reason and beyond any conscious cause, she _knew_ who that was. The closest thing to a sister she ever had in her life. the girl who was her constant companion whilst growing and who had vanished totally from her life just when she needed her most:

"... _Max_...?"

Suddenly, Chloe forgot the imminence of death that she could see in Nathan's crazed, drug-addled and strung-out gaze. She forgot the thousands of dollars she owed a dangerous man and she forgot her missing Angel, Rachel Amber. All she knew was that, when he was done making her into a colander, there would be nothing to stop Nathan using that ugly gun of his to take out the only witness there was to him committing Murder One.

She knew what she had to do and she knew that, in the end, she didn't give a _shit_ what happened to her so long as one of the few truly _good_ people she'd ever known saw another sunrise. 

With a fearless and selfless determination that she didn't before realise she had, she cocked her right arm, twisted her body and drove her fist into the bottom of Nathan's jaw with all the strength she had, following through with her whole upper body momentum. Nathan went staggering but held on to the gun. Reflexively, his finger tightened on the trigger as the gun swung towards the girl standing between him and the door.

Chloe didn't hear the gunshot. All she sensed was the sudden icy rapier slash through the side of her rib-cage just under her left breast that instantly turned her side into fire and slammed the side of her face hard into the frame of the restroom door. The world splashed into blood red agony and then dissolved into bright white shock; her arms and legs turned into noodles and she was pretty sure she heard Max screaming her name.

... Well, _fuck_! Maybe she was going to somehow matter to _someone_ before checking out!

* * *

" _ **CHLOE!**_ "

Max had never screamed so loudly in her life. She honestly had no idea what she was doing and had no conscious memory of what happened next. She just stood at the back of the restroom in full view, staring in horror as Chloe slumped limply to the bottom of the door-frame, leaving a long smear of dark red blood as she did so. 

Her brain didn't register what she was seeing. She wasn't really aware as Nathan turned towards her voice, his gun still in his hand. She couldn't really interpret the bright white flash that illuminated the room as her camera photographing the scene in response to her hands clenching convulsively from the sudden emotional overload and thus pressing the shutter button. Her mind didn't understand the flat crack as the 9mm semi-automatic pistol fired again. What snapped her out of shock was the screaming, blazing knife-edge of copper-jacketed lead that slashed across her left cheekbone on its way to burying itself in the wall behind her.

Max didn't consciously respond to the sudden pain but a _part_ of her certainly did.

The scene stopped dead and turned into a surreal greyscale and a roaring vacuum-like silence filled Max's ears. Stupidly, Max couldn't draw her gaze from the smoking 9mm shell case suddenly frozen as it tumbled away from the cartridge ejector port on the top of Nathan's gun.

_Pause Button._

No matter how often she used her time-freeze abilities, it never failed to freak her out. However, there was no time to consider this, even if her mind was in the condition to do so. All that she could think was: _Chloe! I have to save Chloe!_

Darting around the time-frozen form of Nathan, who was grimacing in terror and horror at what he had just done _twice_ , Max bolted for the door to the rest room and yanked it open. As she did so, the pause evaporated and the world returned to colour and motion. Ahead of her, Principal Wells and David Madsen were moving towards the door, Madsen's hand on his holstered heavy pistol. 

Both men's eyes opened that bit wider as the spectre-white figure of Max staggered out of the room, clutching an antique Polaroid Instamatic camera and with blood streaming from a slash across her left cheek. " _CHLOE! HE SHOT CHLOE!_ " she screamed.

 _He did what?_ a strange, detached part of David's mind thought as the girl staggered and fell to her knees. The next thing that came out of the door sent the former soldier's mind snapping into the reactions that he had been trained to for years. Nathan Prescott, pale, sweaty and his eyes staring in a way that screamed _flying high_ to Madsen, staggered out of the _girls' restroom_ , a chrome-plated semi-automatic pistol in his hand coming up to track towards the staggering and falling Max Caulfield.

Madsen's gun was already out of its holster and centred on that little rich-boy _shit_ 's heart before he even had fully registered what was going on. " _Prescott! FREEZE! Drop the gun!_ "

Nathan blinked at the sight in front of him, not really seeing or understanding anything beyond the instinctual need to flee the cause of his fear or, failing that, to fight his corner to the death. He looked a Max, who was on her knees, her hand touching her wounded face as shock finally gave way to stinging, icy pain. His wavering gun pointed in her general direction and then suddenly the ' _Snap_ ' of the safety catch on a semi-auto being released cut through his mind. He looked up into Madsen's expressionless face and saw the paranoid psycho's gun pointed _right at him_. "I'm not gonna ask again, you little fuck." Madsen's tone of voice could have frozen the air solid and Nathan could see only death in his eyes.

Urine poured down the inside of the legs of Nathan's pants as the gun fell from his nerveless fingers. Madsen collided with him with amazing force and speed. Nathan was driven to his knees, his arms twisted behind his back. He heard and felt the 'cuffs snap around his wrists.

" _Chloe!_ " 

David looked up from where he was cuffing his prisoner to see Caulfield half-stagger and half-crab-walk across the hall towards someone else who had tumbled out of the restroom at the same time she had made her exit. It took a few seconds for his mind to identify the other vic and, when he did, his heart turned to ice in his chest. He instantly recognised the blue-dyed hair, pale skin and the long, intricate tattoo of intertwined roses and thorny vines running up the right arm across the shoulder and onto the side of the neck. His eyes tracked to the tall girl's left side; to the dark red stain quickly spreading across the side of that damn heart diagram t-shirt. "Oh my God! _Chloe! **No**!_" 

Caulfield had finally reached his step-daughter and Madsen watched as the girl clutched her shoulders, tears pouring down her face as she dragged the girl out of the doorway, screaming for Chloe not to be dead. "Caulfield! Kid! Her side! _Stop the bleeding!_ Get something absorbent into the wound and apply pressure! Do it or she's _dead_!"

Somehow, the commanding tone of David's voice cut through Max's shocked and grief-wracked brain. _Stop the bleeding! How?_ After all, it seemed that everything on Chloe's left side beneath her armpit was a bloody mess! Barely able to think, the girl tore off her grey hoodie, balled it up and stuffed it against Chloe's side. This had the first effect that Max had so far seen that had suggested to her that the love of her life was still in the land of the living. The rough shove of Max's hoodie against her wounded side made Chloe's slack face suddenly tighten and she gasped in pain.

"Oh Chloe! Please, God! Don't die! Stay with me!"

Chloe's eyes slowly focussed on Max and a lazy, delirious smile crossed her face. "H... hey, Max Factor! Hella timin' for once in your misbegotten, right...?"

"Chloe! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! This is all my fault!"

"Yeah, that it is," Chloe smirked through the pulses of agony wracking her body. "Still, no harm, no foul, right? You're savin' me now so we're evens... You... you always save me, in the end; I knew it would... would have to... have to be you..." Chloe's eyes began to flutter and roll up into her head. 

"NO! No, Chloe! Stay awake! I need you! I _love you_! Please _don't leave me alone again_!"

Chloe's eyes regained focus. "You... _love me_?"

"Y... yes! Always! Only you and only ever you!" 

Chloe's brows furrowed as she absorbed this in a dizzy, half-conscious manner. She suddenly realised that the 'rain' was Max's tears landing on her face and she couldn't help but grin. "Well... cool! Awkward but cool...!" She blinked in some confusion at something else that entered her field of vision from above. "Oh... hey, step-douche; y'upside-down!"

David, who was crouched by Chloe's head (after having let loose some tension by yelling at that useless ass-kisser Wells to call the paramedics and cops), let that slide. He knew what Chloe thought of him and couldn't give a shit right now. "Just keep talking to your friend, Chloe," he instructed. He looked at Max's tear-streaked and blood-marred face. "Keep pressure on her side and keep her talking, Caulfield. _Don't_ let her lose consciousness."

Satisfied with the brunette hipster's frantic head-nodding, David turned away, his eyes briefly passing over his prisoner, who was lying face down and sobbing self-pityingly for his father, his arms securely restrained behind his back. He stood and walked over to Prescott's gun, still lying where he had kicked it away. On an impulse, he threw his security hat over it to make it harder for some sticky-fingered little delinquent amongst the student body to just 'accidentally' pick it up. He then turned to the other piece of evidence that caught his eye: Max Caulfield's antique yellow Polaroid Instamatic camera. The camera had a photograph sticking out of its delivery slot. Wanting to be thorough, he pulled out the photo and glared at the image revealed: Chloe falling limply back against a background of high-velocity blood-splatter on the restroom's door and, in the foreground, Prescott, his face twisted with animal rage and fear, turning towards the photographer, his gun in hand and pointing at her, ready to fire.

David felt a rage that he rarely felt as he stooped down next to the little shit he had just restrained. He drove a knee into the small of Nathan's back and got a handful of $500-an-hour barber-dressed dirty brown hair to twist the little fucktard's face towards his. "Like shooting _little girls_ you piece of _shit_?" he hissed. "Well, I hope that you _got off_ from that because that's the last cheap thrill you'll be getting _this side of the wall of the Big House_!" 

* * *

Chloe _hurt_. She hurt in ways she never knew it was _possible_ to hurt but, in some ways, that was a relief because she doubted that one could hurt whilst they were dead.

With a deep groan, she forced her eyes open and light streamed into her eyes, making her instantly regret the effort. Blinking repeatedly turned the pinkish-brown blur into a familiar smiling face with freckles speckled across the cheeks and nose. "H... Hey, _Deus ex Maximus_ ," Chloe murmured. "I... I guess you weren't a hallucination then?" Max, not trusting herself to speak nodded with a watery smile. "Huh... Well... hella good timing, short-stuff..." Chloe frowned and reached up to the white dressing on Max's left cheek. "Looks like you didn't get off scot free though."

Max touched the dressing self-consciously. "eleven stitches and I'll probably feel it every time the weather changes; oh, and I'll probably have hella weird smile from now on," she said with commendable calm. Frankly, if it was the price for Chloe being alive, she'd take half her face being blown off. If anything, the fact that Nathan had apparently been so strung out (and briefly blinded by her camera's flash in the dimly-lit restroom) that he couldn't aim straight at anything other than point-blank range made her feel as if she had cheated a little.

"Hey," Chloe's hand weakly closed on Max's. "Switch the smile back on, Maximum Angst. You're okay and I'm apparently alive. So, it's a win all around. Let's not start beating yourself up over the past; can't change the past!" Chloe noted the way Max's face fell and she paled as if she was about to start upchucking all over the place but didn't want to spoil the moment by asking why. "So… What's been happening?"

Max quickly outlined the immediate aftermath of the shooting and through the day or so Chloe had been unconscious. She noted how quickly David Madsen had taken charge (Wells had been so shocked by Nathan 'My Daddy Owns This School' Prescott committing a double attempted homicide that he had barely been effective enough to be described as 'useless'). She lingered briefly on how Kate Marsh had knelt beside Max, helping her keep pressure on Chloe's wound whilst also stemming the bleeding of Max's own minor but still nasty wound. She recalled the thunderous look on the face of Nathan's father as he briefly made an appearance in the emergency services' makeshift camp outside the school to berate a cowering and apologetic Wells. Max dwelt with some malicious delight on the hateful look Sean Prescott had shot at his only son, who was slumped in a near-catatonic state in a police cruiser, before he stormed away to his chauffeur-driven limo.

"You were in surgery for, like, six hours," Max concluded. "You had a collapsed lung and the doctors struggled to control the bleeding for a while there. Your mom wouldn't move from the waiting room and my mom had to drag her down to the canteen to get something to eat! David's been in a few times and he says that, according to his friends at the Sheriff's office, Nathan's been 'singing like a birdie'." Max's eyes opened wider as she went on to far juicer news. "Mr Jefferson has been arrested! David didn't want to say why but from what the other girls said, he's been running some kind of _drug ring_!"

Chloe grimaced. It was a lot more than a drug ring but she wasn't sure if this was the time to tell Max just how much liquid _shit_ ran down the walls of that school. She frowned. Max was hesitating; hiding something. "Come on Mad Max, I know your 'I don't want to talk about it' face!"

Max grimaced. "I... Chloe... Look, your side is a mess; I don't want to make it worse after they stopped the bleeding and re-inflated your lung..."

Chloe squeezed her childhood best friend's hand tightly, her face darkening into a scowl. "Max, don't wimp out on me now!"

Max closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. "Chloe, they... They found Rachel whilst you were still in recovery." 

Chloe didn't stop to question how Max knew Rachel and knew that she knew her; her heart jumped inside her chest. "Rachel! They found her? Where is she? Is she okay?" The blue-haired punk girl's eyes locked onto Max's eyes and noticed the grief and sorrow there. "M... Max? Max, for dog's sake, don't tell me... Please... Oh, please... Please no! _No_...! NO...!"

"Chloe... I'm sorry... They've charged Mr Jefferson with _murder_..."

" _No... NO!!! RACHEL! **RACHEL**!!!_" Suddenly, Chloe was wrapped in Max's arms. Part of her wanted to shove the smaller girl away but another part of her couldn't help but _need_ the unconditional love and comfort in that embrace. She returned the hug desperately, as if her childhood best friend was the last thing keeping her from drowning. She wordlessly screamed her grief into Max's shoulder and wept out her loss.

After a timeless moment of agonised oblivion, Chloe could _think_ again. Surprisingly, the first thing that came into her mind as she looked up into Max's tear-filled eyes was: "Thank you for telling me the truth." Beyond Max's shoulder she could see her distraught mother and David, who, from what Max had been telling her, had been surprisingly cool today. As if at an unspoken command, Max stood back and let Joyce step towards her daughter and embrace her. David took a huge personal step and came up behind his wife to put a supporting hand on her back. He turned back to Max and briefly nodded; Max was never sure if it was dismissal or thanks; more likely it was a mix of both.

Max took the cue to leave. In any case, she needed to catch up with Kate, who had her own barrel of hurt to deal with after giving her deposition to the ADA.

* * *

Kate Marsh had never realised how well she had come to know Max's cat-like tread and unique behaviour patterns in the few weeks she had known the brunette shutterbug. However, as she heard the soft footsteps approach her seat in the courtyard of Blackwell Academy, she recognised them at once. Any remaining doubt was erased by Max's usual habit of vaulting _over_ the bench to sit Indian-style beside her.

"It's way past curfew, Max," Kate said before turning to her best friend with a slightly mocking smile. "Besides, you're supposedly on sick leave! What are you doing here?"

"Well, Mr Madsen said that I'm so great at doing a security job that he wants me to help him out a permanent basis: Such as by catching naughty schoolgirls out after curfew!" There was a long pause before Max lost control of her chuckle and Kate began to giggle too. "Seriously, Kate, I've heard a little about what's going on at school right now and..." Max broke off before seizing her courage with both hands as an image briefly flashed through her mind of her gentle, spiritual friend soaring through the air towards the unyielding sidewalk five storeys below. _Never again; I'm never going to let you fall._ "Kate, what kind of friend would leave you to deal with this sh... with this _stuff_ alone? I might not be able to do much but at least I can be here!"

Kate's hands closed around Max's with a vice-like strength that made the brunette wince slightly but not pull back. "I'm here, Katie-Saintly," she murmured in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. "You don't have to put up a front for me!"

Kate's sniffle was quite surprisingly loud before she started talking. "I thought that it would be easier afterwards, you know? That telling would ease the burden but... but it still hurts and I still can't stop reliving it...! Being... being paralysed, able to think but not able to move whilst they... they _touched_ me and _did things_...! I can still hear that... _filthy monster_ telling Nathan what do do and where to touch me and..." Kate sobbed loudly and was suddenly engulfed in Max's arms; she returned the hug gratefully. "How are you so _strong_?" she murmured.

Max made a most unladylike noise. "I don't think I am," she replied at last. "I just... I just can't let myself hide away when other people need me." She thought of her own nightmare experiences in the Dark Room in several iterations of this strange, strange week and a deep shudder ran through her. "I can't let myself just crawl into a corner and die when other people need me. Maybe I'm just too much of a coward to be a coward?"

"No," Kate responded at last. "Too strong; too much an angel to let bad things stand."

Max snorted. "An angel? Me? Kate, I think that you're thinking of someone else!"

Kate smiled with surprising warmth for such a normally-reserved girl. "Max, if there's one thing that I've learned since I started attending Blackwell Academy, it's this: You never know where you'll find your angels or in what form. That said...? You fit the bill better than most!" A part of Kate that she didn't intend to think about was genuinely pleased by Max's blush.


	2. Wake-up Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So... Maybe Max wasn't the only one who came to the bathroom from the storm-swept lighthouse...

Chloe came awake in the twilight semi-darkness of the night-time surgical ward. All she could hear was the steady bleep and hiss of various life-support and monitoring mechanisms, fortunately few for her but rather for the poor bitch in the bed opposite hers who had been brought in after being pretty much pulverised by a DUI during the evening.

Chloe puzzled briefly over what could have awoken her. Considering the amount of the 'good stuff' (as the recovery nurse had described her pain meds) had been pumped into her IV that evening, she should have slept through the Apocalypse. Then she saw the joint flare as someone took a pull on the visitor's chair to her right. 

Any possibility that this was anything non-weird was dispelled by three key facts: First, despite the smoking joint, Chloe could not smell the characteristic scent of weed. Secondly, _she could see the back of the chair through her visitor's body_. Thirdly and most decisively, _her semi-transparent visitor was HER_.

The glowing, translucent phantom shot Chloe a scornful and unfriendly smirk. "Hi, shit-pile! I see you managed to sneak through this one."

Chloe finally got her brain sufficiently together to talk. "This is one fuck of a morphine trip."

The 'other Chloe' smirked. "Oh, you wish. You know, there's a version of Kate Marsh who told me about an interesting myth: It's possible that someone can make a total fuck-up of their life despite every possible opportunity. Then, at the very worst point in their life, when they've pissed away every single good thing they've ever had and have been willing to throw away every last chance that they're ever going to get...? Well, then, as they lie on the flea-infested rag on which they're about to die, do you know what happens?" 

The phantom took another drag of her joint and cast it away, it fading from existence the moment it left her hand. She stood and leaned over Chloe and shot her a subtly-glowing and unfriendly grin. " _An angel appears to them._ "

Unsurprisingly, Chloe wasn't impressed. She knew her own dramatic tactics, after all, and wouldn't easily be shaken by them. "You're a fuckin' weird angel."

"That I am." The other Chloe straightened and smirked at her. "If that _is_ what I am. You know what happens to a soul who was part of an alternate time-line that imploded but who is bound to the soul of one still alive in the current time-line?" Chloe shook her head, surprising herself that she actually _understood_ half of that. "It turns out that they don't get to do the Big Sleep, because there's another version of them filling their 'space' in the final reckoning. That's you, by the way."

The other Chloe sat on the bottom of her more corporeal self's bed and both were surprised that the mattress compressed slightly under her. "Oh, don't feel too guilty. It's kind of cool. I'm bound to Max's soul; she was my girlfriend in that other time-line, by the way. She does crazy stuff and good stuff all the time; it isn't boring and I get to watch her in the shower, which is a _big_ bonus, especially if she's feeling frisky!"

"So, you're a creepy peeking pervert too?"

"Don't judge me, asswipe; you would if you could." Chloe's face flamed at this all-too-correct jab. The spectral version of her seemed to draw in a deep breath. "Anyway: Angels. You might deny it but basically all the shit in your life? That's down to you. I'm not talking about Dad or Max leaving; that's other folk. But you...? You and me, really? You're the one who chose to take it out on Mom and turn it up to eleven when she married David. You're the one who chose to be a sulky bitch and piss away all the chances you had to have a good life. You're the one who decided that using dope and booze to stop _thinking and feeling_ was the right way to beat this world!

"I mean, seriously girl. How many times did Rachel put us on a break because she couldn't handle our shit? I mean, we're talking _Rachel_ here. _She_ couldn't handle our shit? That's hella hard-core stuff!"

Chloe drew in a breath to deny it but she couldn't. How many people had reached out to her and she hadn't given them a chance? She had _delighted_ in being miserable and making others miserable in turn. "I guess I have been a bit of a drama queen," she murmured at last.

"Guess? For fuck sake, we're the picture in the book next to 'Self-Absorbed Fucking Bitch'." The other Chloe looked at her living doppelganger and sighed. "Look, you know what Max taught me? She taught me to _never_ stop fighting for a happily ever after. She never stopped looking for a way to save _everyone_ , even shits who deserved to be in the ground like Prescott, Frank and Jefferson. When she finally realised that this wasn't happening and that she'd have to let me die to save this city? It nearly _destroyed_ her. I think that she was ready to let Nathan _kill_ her after he'd finished with you.

"The point is that she's never stopped trying to make things better. She's tried to help Kate, she's tried to help us. Hell, she's even tried to help _David_ be less of a douche! 

"So, there you have it, two different examples. 'Woe is me' Chloe, who gave up and spent the next five years of her life making everyone else as miserable as she was and Maximum Effort, who spent north of _two-hundred_ redos of this week trying to make sure that _no-one dies_ , not on her watch. 

"So, what's it going to be, Chloe? Are you going to continue to coast through life? Taking and not giving? Twisting everything around you into misery and self-destructive indulgence? Hurting the few people you still have left just because you resent them for trying to be happy when you don't think that should be possible?  
"Or, are you going to realise something: But for Max knowing what was about to happen, _you should be dead_. Nathan _would_ have blown your heart all over the restroom door and then gone down for Murder One. 

"You've been given something that few of us ever get Chloe: You've got a _second chance_. You've got a chance to make your life meaningful. You've got a chance to make things _right_. You've got a chance to make sure that, when your number finally comes up, you look into the Reaper's face and tell him: 'I've got lots of good photographs; let's get out of here.'" The spectral Chloe smirked. "Do you know the fuckin' worst part of this is? The worst part of getting your angel?" She leaned forwards again and touched Chloe on the nose. To the horror of the bedridden shooting survivor, she felt a tingle of electricity and smelled ozone. "The worst part of this is _you get only one_. One last 'extra life' and then 'whoosh': Oblivion without any good comin' of it."

"I..." Chloe shook her head. "I'm scared."

The other Chloe smiled, genuinely, for the first time. "The smartest thing we've said since dad died. I can only give you this advice: Get Max's help. You'll need to give her a firm kick up the ass to get out of the occasional indecision loop but she'll never steer you wrong."

Chloe drew in a deep breath. "The bitch walked out on me after dad died. I never heard from her; the first time I saw her in _five fucking years_ was when she appeared in the restroom looking like I was a ghost already!"

The other Chloe nodded. "Remember how we started fucking up because we were sad, hurting and scared? We're not the only one. We've got a really bad moral basis to hate Max for doin' the same." The spectral punk stood up straighter. "You only get the one, Chloe. Don't fuck this up or it will be more than just us who suffer and you'll feel worse for it."

"You only get the one." Those words came out of Chloe's mouth because her spectral visitor was gone. _Am I going crazy? Fuckin' talking to myself? Having a whole dog-damn **conversation** with a condescending ghost version of myself...?_

Chloe's eyes opened very, very wide as she watched an electric blue butterfly, shining impossibly in the dimly-lit twilight of the night-time surgical ward flap its wings and fly _right through the plate glass and out of sight_.

" _Holy... fucking..._ " Suddenly, an enormous lethargy passed over Chloe's mind and body, as if someone had thrown a switch. Her eyes drooped uncontrollably closed. As her mind dissolved into the oblivion of deepest sleep, the last coherent thought that passed through it was: 

_You only get the one._

* * *

"Not your usual poison."

Sitting on her truck's hood, Chloe took a drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out her nostrils before turning to David. "Yeah... I guess I'm cooling on weed. Fucks up my thinking when I need to think straight."

David nodded and let his cigar smoulder between his lips a while before taking it out so he could continue. "I was hooked for a while when I came back from my second tour in Iraq. Shit was good for stopping me thinking but, after a while, I realised that it was _stopping me thinking_."

There was another long pause before David spoke again. "I just wanted to tell you... that I'm proud of you." Chloe's raised eyebrow encouraged the man to continue. "For taking Wells's offer and going back to Blackwell."

"Don't be; this isn't anything to do with you." Chloe sighed and deliberately took a moment to rein in her anger. "I don't mean that in a bad way. What I'm saying is that this isn't about pleasing you or mom. It's about doing right by _me_. I'm done with being the victim and sliding down the hill kicking over anyone who tries to stop me. I'm going to get my life on track and I'm going to make this my all-time low point; I'm never going to be this close ever again." The blue-haired punk rubbed the dressing under her left arm self-consciously. 

David smiled, shocking the hell out of Chloe; she didn't remember the last time he did that! "Chloe, you realise that you doing this for _you_? Wanting to turn your life around so you can stand your own company? That makes your mom prouder than you can imagine. When you make your mom happy? Then _I'm_ proud of you."

Both were silent for a while as they digested this. "So," David said at last. "I found the gun you stole from me. I should be mad at that shit."

"'Cept I left it out on my bed, unloaded an' with an apology note," Chloe grunted in reply.

"There's that. Anyway, I want you to keep it. A thirty-eight heavy barrel is a good gun for a woman to have to protect herself. Tomorrow, I'm going to get you a range license and, this weekend, I'm gonna start teaching you to shoot. Given we've had fucks coming into that school waving guns, you're going to learn how to protect yourself and your friends. Knowin' how guns work is the first step."

Chloe considered that thoughtfully. After looking down the barrel of a gun and seeing the wound along Max's cheek that would leave a scar that her best friend would have to look at in the mirror every day for the rest of her life, she wasn't sure that she _wanted_ to learn how to shoot. However, she felt this was a conversation for another day. "Am I allowed to say that I'm as freaked as fuck by how nice you're being?"

"You're not the only one who's been thinking about how badly they've been doing 'adult'." David frowned after saying that. He wasn't about to tell Chloe about a lot of things. For example, he wasn't going to tell her about the nightmare, vision or whatever the fuck it was last night when, with Joyce sleeping peacefully at his side, _a spectral version of Chloe_ had awoken him and, with terrifying calm frankness, had exposed just how screwed up he was; how he had let that sick beast Jefferson run his drug, rape and kiddie porn ring _right under his nose_ because he was so obsessed with finding out what criminal schemes Chloe and her missing girlfriend were up to that he was _ignoring_ anything else! Hell, he was even ignoring obvious bullying like that witch Victoria Chase and her mindless band of groupies victimising that poor church mouse Kate Marsh! Another clue of what should have been the obvious culture of evil at the school that he was supposedly protecting that he had missed because of pride and his obsession with Chloe's delinquency.

Well, that was changing. Tomorrow, the CCTV cameras that he had set up throughout the house were coming down. He was going to look at _practical_ security steps for the school like weapons screening, safety courses and anonymous tip-lines for bullying victims. Most importantly, he was going to stop assuming that the only threats to the safety of the school were people who offended him personally. That was just full of shit and he shouldn't have had to been told so by the vision of the ghost of his step-daughter to realise that.

Meanwhile, Chloe had taken another drag on her cigarette and turned back to face her mother's second husband. "Yeah... You know, it occurs to me that the way I've been acting has been hurting two people the most: Me and mom. I don't see why I didn't get that before but I get it now." Much to David's surprise she stuck out a hand. "Let's do a deal: For mom, we'll meet each other half-way. I'll try to avoid causing such a lot of shit to land in your life if, in return, you'll not try to make me a good soldier."

David snorted as he thought of the hours he'd spent reading Chloe's notes about her investigation into Rachel Amber's disappearance that, somehow, that Max kid knew about and where to find them. "Kid, you're already closer to being a good soldier than I think you'd like. Still, yeah. For Joyce, there's a truce and I promise to give you all the rope you need, either to find where you're going or to hang yourself." The man frowned. "The minute you hurt your mom, the deal's off."

In some ways, this relieved Chloe; she'd be too freaked to live around a David that had had a personality transplant. However, a David who still didn't really _like_ her or her life choices but was willing to respect her and them where they weren't harmful to others was something she felt she could work with. "Deal." The two shook hands.

After a long pause, Chloe spoke, as much to herself as her stepfather. "I should be dead; but for that punch that knocked Nathan's aim off, I _would_ be dead. I'm not letting this go to waste. I'm gonna do this and I'm going to make all this shit, every bad thing that's happened in this town, all worth it someday." She paused for a long time before turning to David. "Hey, is there, y'know, really a career in body art? Not just a street-corner parlour thing?"


	3. Goodbye, My Angel. Hello, My Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every journey has an ending, including (and especially) the journey of life. However, sometimes, that ending also marks a beginning.

It was amazing how events changed impressions of people in the public eye. 

A month ago, Max Caulfield was a largely-unknown antisocial loner, despised by the social elite of Blackwell Academy and really only able to connect with fellow outsiders like Kate and Warren. Chloe Price was a freakish drop-out, considered to be 'Most Likely to be Charged With a Felony Before Her Twenty-First Birthday'. Kate Marsh was the slutty hypocrite who preached abstinence when she secretly put out to any who was even vaguely interested. Rachel Amber was the mysterious missing girl remembered with equal awe and sneering disdain for her free-spirited ways. Now, in various ways, they were all considered heroes. 

During her recovery, Chloe had been informed by her mom that, in one of his last official acts before resigning his post, Principal Raymond Wells had reversed Chloe's expulsion from Blackwell Academy. As reluctant as she was to return to that place, she was determined to remain true to her vow to take this new lease of life in both hands and make her life a success. She would always remember that moment when she and Max walked in to the entrance hall on their first day back, only to be greeted by thunderous applause and cheers. Max was engulfed in the arms of Kate and Warren and Chloe was shocked beyond words to receive congratulatory back-slaps and words of praise.

It seems that, at some point in the gossip cycle, the official story, as far as the students were concerned, became that Chloe and Max were heroic amateur detectives who had somehow traced Rachel's disappearance to Nathan. This 'official line' (to which Victoria Chase, of all people, was most merciless and venomous in crushing any dissenting opinion) further stated that Chloe and Max had set up the whole scene in the bathroom. So people said, Chloe deliberately pushed Nathan to the breaking point in the hope that Max could capture him on film in the middle of some incriminating act that they could then use as leverage to get him to turn People's Evidence against Jefferson. 

Kate, previously scorned, was suddenly hailed as a heroic rape survivor and suddenly all the A-List girls wanted to be seen to be associated with her (Kate-esque chastity vow bracelets even had made a sudden appearance in vogue). Rachel was suddenly a martyr; a beautiful spirit who had fallen to a terrible fate at the hands of a man who was quickly taking on the characteristics of the Devil's Own Chosen in school mythology (an appellation that neither Max, Chloe nor Kate felt able to disagree with).

Chloe supposed that she and Max could correct these misconceptions but, in the end, why bother? They were better than the truth and might easily do some good if it drove their peers to live better lives.

* * *

Chloe didn't do dresses. She'd always been something of a tomboy and the whole 'pretty yourself up' thing was essentially foreign to her aesthetic instincts. However, for Rachel Amber, she'd do a lot that she'd normally not consider. This is why she was wearing a long-skirted black one-piece dress and low-heel pumps and had gone without her usual bullet necklace and woollen cap. That is why she could see nothing through her tears and hear nothing through the roaring of her blood in her ears. Because being here and now and showing all the respect and emotion that she could was the least she could do for her Angel's funeral. 

It genuinely surprised her to see Rachel's bio-mom, Sara, although she was nowhere near James and Rose Amber. Rose was doing about as badly as Chloe whilst James was unreadable. Chloe supposed she should be angry but she was a bit too busy not collapsing with grief to care about her Angel's father's strangely emotionless manner. Still, if the asshole continued to tighten the vice he had on Jefferson, Nathan and Sean Prescott's balls, she'd keep her peace.

Much to her surprise, Frank Bowers was there too. Still, maybe that made a kind of sense. Rachel had been more than a customer to him; she was a friend. Chloe had kind of wondered if she was even more than that sometimes. Poor Pompidou had no idea what was going on but clearly understood his master's pain, given the mournful looks he was giving the man. 

However, no matter how strong she attempted to be, Chloe couldn't avoid one irrefutable truth: The box they were lowering into a hole in the ground contained the physical remains of her Angel: The girl who somehow helped her find some kind of meaning in continuing to exist when she just wanted to curl up into a ball and... _cease to exist_. Tears were streaming down the faces of Sara and Mrs Amber and Chloe could feel her attempts to control her own need to cry rapidly failing her. She clenched Max's hand so tightly that she feared she would break it but, no matter how hard Max squeezed back, it wasn't enough. Finally her childhood best friend hand suddenly took her head and leaned it into the crook of her neck and Chloe began to sob around her gritted teeth.

Chloe snapped out of her fugue when, much to her shock, Max kissed her cheek. "Chloe, I think that you need to say goodbye." 

Chloe blinked to clear her eyes of tears and realised that the service was done. Rose and Sara were hugging at the graveside and James was standing at a distance, talking on his cellphone. She was just debating what to do next when Frank walked past her and patted her on the shoulder in an awkward way. Chloe wasn't about to forget her problems with the man but, in that brief moment, it seems that they'd shared something. Finally, she nodded. "Yeah, you're right Max."

Max watched as Chloe walked to the graveside, clearly trying to stay strong but clearly having problems putting one foot in front of another.

"She needs you, Max." Of all the people she'd expected to be there, Kate Marsh was the last. From what she knew of Rachel, she and Kate were as close to polar opposites as it was possible to be yet, or so it seems, Kate had decided to be there for the stranger that was Chloe Price just from her own strong sense of right and wrong.

"She needs to say goodbye and she doesn't need me intruding."

Kate shook her head. "She needs your strength, Max, just as much as I did recently." The blonde managed an enigmatic half-smile. "You seem to be good at that." Max opened her mouth to demur again but Kate interrupted. "Chloe strikes me as the sort of person who likes to face things alone but... Max? That isn't healthy… or even _possible_. Go to her and let her realise that she isn't alone and doesn't _have_ to be alone."

Max swallowed but couldn't think of a single good rejoinder except to invoke Chloe's pride and her own timidity and, frankly, nothing good had ever come to allowing either of those things have their way in situations like this. Besides, hadn't this all started by her being too afraid to be there for Chloe after Uncle William died? So, she did the right thing and listened to Kate.

Chloe was busy uttering a kind of stream-of-consciousness to Rachel's grave. "... Look, you'll laugh but... there's this girl. You never met her but, way back when, we were as tight as you could get. She ran away when dad died; left me hanging but, I can't blame her from being scared away because I would have run too, if I could. She's good people, Rachel. She cares for me and... And even in the few days we've been back together... There's a connection there. I don't know what it is or where it will go but, for the first time in a long time, I can look further ahead than a day and see a future beyond being just alive. I... I _like_ that feeling Rach, I really do.

"I'll never forget you, Angel. You taught me freedom and you taught me what love is for an adult but I can't let this be the end for me. I can't just stop and sit there waiting for the end. I want to live Rachel, just like you taught me. I want to _live_ and be free and be happy! I want to _love_ again... and I think that I want it to be with Max."

Max nearly swallowed her tongue. She honestly had not expected or hoped that she'd find a way into Chloe's heart in this revised timeline but the words were said. _Max, don't wimp out on me now!_ she thought to herself, quoting Chloe of course.

Max reached out and squeezed the kneeling Chloe's shoulder. The bluenette reached back and squeezed her hand gratefully. "So, here she is, Rachel: This is Max Caulfield. I think you would have liked her a lot... probably ragged on her a lot too but we know that's how you roll, right?" Chloe's smile actually suddenly didn't look forced for the first time that day!

Max somehow stamped down on the _insane_ urge to say something to the grave. Then she noticed something perched on the top of Rachel's gravestone. That _butterfly_! Insane as it was, she somehow _knew_ that it was the same unearthly and luminescent blue butterfly one from the awful, terrible day in the school restroom. 

Chloe looked on in amazement as her spectral visitor... her strange ghostly echo sat Indian-style beside the grave, her hand hovering over the freshly-filled earth. "Hey, Angel," her doppelganger whispered with a bittersweet smile. "Been a while. Keep a seat warm and a beer cold for me, yeah? Even if we have to wait until the end of the universe?" She looked up and genuine mischief sparkled in her translucent and faintly-glowing eyes. "See you wised up and grabbed the winning chance at last, girl!" 

Chloe thought of saying something but decided that she couldn't without looking like a lunatic, so she just squeezed Max's hand on her shoulder again and nodded with a slight smile.

Max frowned as the butterfly took off from the top of the gravestone and fluttered towards her. For no reason that she could understand, she raised her free hand and let it alight on her forefinger. For some reason her uninjured cheek tingled with electricity.

Chloe twisted around to follow her doppelganger as the ghost walked over to Max. She stroked a subtly-glowing finger along Max's cheekbone with a mournful and loving smile. "She's going to be the best thing that happens to you Chloe. Yeah, I'm jealous that you get to have that life with her that I didn't but... I'm _glad_. You two are going to be really happy together and... the thing is that I've got the feeling that you're going to earn it. Just don't screw up and prove me wrong!"

Living Chloe rolled her eyes but nodded again. She stood and put a slightly possessive arm across Max's shoulders, making the brunette's freckled face light up with happiness. _Jeez, Romance to the Max! If just a hug sets you off, what's our first serious kiss going to be like?_ Chloe found that she desperately wanted to know the answer to that!

That's when things got _really_ weird. "So, are you just going to stand there and stare at those two or are you coming?" Chloe knew that voice even if she knew that she'd never hear it again. Her ghostly self turned, her mouth dropping open in shock.

The translucent form of Rachel Amber stood in the middle of a shining light just a few feet away, grinning at both Chloe's and the unseeing Max in a fey and slightly mocking way. "Angel?" the ghostly Chloe finally said.

"Who else, babe? Come on, your ride is here and I'm the driver. Again."

"But me? Going... going to?" The spectral punk pointed up in a rather stupid way. Somehow her more material doppelganger managed not to start laughing.

"You gave up your life and your future, Chlo for this... well, this rotten-to-the-core dried up mess of a town. Why? Because one life for thousands makes _sense_ to you, no matter how little you like the people that you'd be saving. What did you do after that? You made sure that your other self and the girl you love are going to be happy together. You even tried to help out a guy that you hate!" Rachel grinned more genuinely. "That's what really saved this town, you know? You making that choice to give up everything for it." Rachel looked over at the other Chloe and shot her a sly, sensual wink. "Also _her_ choice to fight to protect Max no matter how much she resented her and even if it cost her life! Just in case you missed it, that makes you both 'good people'! You earned this, lover, so let's not wait around!"

Rachel extended her hand and, with an expression of wonder, Chloe's ghostly counterpart took it. As living Chloe looked on, the two walked away from the graveside into the intense light until they were only visible as tiny shadowy edges of movement until, at last, the light was gone. Max saw none of this, of course, but she saw the butterfly take wing and soar up and up into the sky until it flew into the glare of the noonday sun and was lost to her sight.

Max looked back to Chloe and saw that her possible soon-to-be-official girlfriend was staring at wonder at nothing, the tears once again streaming down her face contrasting with her shocked smile. "Chloe?"

The punk girl shook her head and turned her gaze to Max. "I... I guess... I guess good things do happen to good people. Whether or not they _think_ that they're good people!" Chloe grinned. "You know, suddenly, I want to see what is in the future. So, let's go and find it." In a typical Chloe moment, she turned back to the grave and blew it a kiss before taking Max's hand. With a matching spring in their step, the two young lovers strode away on the third path to the future neither of them had ever expected to have.


End file.
